Looking from the details of the April 6th protests to the bigger picture, anger over the inability to provide the basic necessities of life is as good a catalyst as any to spark wider anger with a repressive, stagnant government. What moved many people initially to protest on April 6th may have been bread, but it is only the tip of the pyramid when it comes to socioeconomic inequality and the government's inability to meet the most basic needs of the majority of the population. Examples abound: the increasing price of food and fuel without an accompanying rise in wages; the prohibitively expensive housing market; and the misuse of government funds (including billions of dollars in foreign aid). With its swift and gratuitous response on April 6th, the government was not merely reprimanding a hungry and restless nation; it was threatening to take harsh action against demonstrators who used the bread crisis to bring to light the manifold social injustices that the current system perpetrated, if not created.

But is a national movement demanding governmental reform brewing in Egypt's horizon? It may be too soon to tell, but by most measures, the April 6th protests fell far short of the aspirations of their organizers and observers. From the start, the strike suffered from a lack of coordination between the various "organizers" as well as from a lack of clear intention behind the day's events. It was ambiguous whether the protests and strikes planned were meant mainly to show solidarity with...

The holiday of Sham el Naseem, which can be traced back to Pharoanic harvest celebrations nearly five thousand years ago, is a rare day in Egypt. Unlike strictly religious holidays, Sham el Naseem is celebrated by all Egyptians regardless of their religion. And unlike national holidays, which were originally enthusiastic celebrations of the various successes of the 1952 revolution, Sham el Naseem is not a bitter annual reminder of the current state of that much diminished revolutionary fervor. Rather, its like a Thursday night (the beginning of the weekend in the Muslim world) and a Friday morning (the time reserved for prayer and the only period of relative calm and quiet) rolled into one, with happy seeming families lugging coolers and picnic baskets by way of taxis and the metro to the city's scarce public parks and other struggling strips of green space, where they eat, play, and enjoy the beautiful spring weather.

It seems that these are not recent developments. In 1834, the orientalist Edward Lane wrote of Sham el Naseem, in his well known book, "Manners and Customs of Modern Egyptians":

[I]n the course of the forenoon many of the citizens of Cairo ride or walk a little way into the country, or go in boats, generally northward, to take the air, or, as they term it, smell the air, which on that day they believe to have a wonderfully beneficial effect. The greater number dine in the country or on the river.

But while the manners and...

The weather on the morning of April 6th, though uncommon for Cairo, was not unheard of: cloudy, slightly muggy, with a sandstorm – one of the first of the season – rolling into Cairo by 11AM, crafting an orange glow and an eerie aura around the contours of the city. And like the weather, the events of the 6th, though uncommon, were not unheard of either.

April 6th was a day of national protest against the government’s inability to curb the inflation of food prices and unwillingness to raise wages. Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra, an important textile center in the northern Nile Delta that had previously seen two successful labor strikes, was the first to call a strike on April 6th and was the impetus for the attempts to organize a broader, national strike. For weeks, rumors about protests and strikes organized by various political opposition groups spread faster than a viral Youtube video, predominantly through word-of-mouth, mobile phone texting, and internet websites, especially social networking sites like Facebook. The plan was to hold protests in key parts of Cairo, including the main state universities, as well as in every Egyptian governorate. Many speculated that the protests would erupt in violence. Some recalled the bread riots of 1977. Few believed that they would move the government to reform.

The government had been well-prepared to put down the protests. On April 5th, potential strikers were warned that the government would “take necessary and resolute measures toward any attempt to demonstrate, impede traffic, hamper...

Take a walk down the Corniche, the cobblestone path that runs along the elevated banks of the Nile as it passes through Cairo, and you will find a strange phenomenon. To unfamiliar eyes, it appears at first glance that the population of the city is quite conservative, judging by the proportion of veiled to non-veiled women. Counting out Coptic Christians, who make up roughly ten percent of the population, a conservative estimate would put the percentage of veiled Egyptian women at ninety percent.

But judging religiosity by a piece of cloth can be quite misleading. A closer look reveals that womens’ dress – as well as degrees of religious belief and practice - varies drastically. At one end of the spectrum are the relatively few women who have taken to wearing dark, loose robes that conceal the shape of their bodies and a “niqab” which covers their face except the eyes. At the other end are those women – often wealthy elites or those who wish to emulate them - who sport designer outfits and tailored business suits that leave very little to the imagination. Between these two poles, almost anything is possible, from the modest vanilla colored blouses and loose brown slacks that some women wear with matching hijab to the skin tight jeans that others match with multicolored and even see-through headscarves.

This latter category -- hijab-wearing woman in tight jeans -- points to a deep ambivalence of contemporary Egypt society. The hijab is, ostensibly, a gesture of...

I recently visited the southern Egyptian city of Luxor, which means "the Palaces," a reference to the impressive array of Pharonic palaces strewn through the Nile river valley around the ancient capital city of Thebes, which saw its cultural and political height some 3,500 years ago. The contemporary city of Luxor, with a population of about 500,000 locals, is a very popular tourist site and witnesses tens of thousands of middle-aged and elderly European, American, and Japanese travelers (as well as wealthy Egyptians escaping the madness of Cairo) complete with fanny packs, bottled water, and flash photography ushered through the various sights during the winter season.

For anyone who is interested in Egyptology, this place must be fascinating. Monuments! Inscriptions! Burial chambers! The crumbling testaments to a past civilization are endless. But the overwhelming majority of tourists are not experts, or, indeed, interested in very much beyond the little tourist triangle snug up against the Nile, crowded with luxury hotels, bars, restaurants, and a cute, sterile tourist bazaar. Here, one can buy silver jewelry, cloth, spices and anything else to satisfy your oriental imagination - even wooden and stone statues of donkeys and Pharaohs, between which it is possible to sum up Egypt's five thousand year recorded history.

We arrived in Luxor in the morning hours, after traveling through the stunningly beautiful Nile river valley at dawn. The city, at first glance from sleepy eyes, is remarkable: elegant sand-colored buildings nestled together against the tracks, with locals shopping and moving...